


what goes on

by Afueras



Category: Bandom, Placebo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 06:10:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afueras/pseuds/Afueras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You thought I didn’t notice, or maybe that I didn’t care. In truth, I just didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what goes on

**Author's Note:**

> From 2011, I think. I didn't change anything, other than fix a few typos. Wrote this originally as a Brewitt, but works for Molsdal or whatever too I guess  
> Title from a Velvet Underground song

Sometimes, in life, things don’t go as you wish.

You knew it as you pulled on the tight dress for the thousandth time this week, as you rose from the thousandth man’s bed, as you collected your money from the nightstand and bent painfully to lace your boots.

I knew it as I watched you come in through the door each day, and as I kept my mouth shut for fear of upsetting you. Making you rage at me like you did that once, when you broke the bathroom mirror. You screamed, and refused to come out for nearly a full day. I thought that I had lost you.

That wasn’t the first time I thought I had lost you.

Every morning you came home, you cried in the bathroom for a little while. You thought I didn’t notice, or maybe that I didn’t care. In truth, I just didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing at all. I regret that.

I knew from the moment I took you in, dragging you soaked and clawing from the street, that you had problems. I knew you had nasty habits and a nasty history. I knew that you tested most people’s patience and that they usually failed. I knew, and I didn’t care. Not enough. Not then.

I didn’t care as time went on, either. I stayed benign through your tantrums and I was balm to your small wounds. I was the one to zip your dresses and refill your whiskey glass, though I did that against my better judgment. I was the one to tell you when you were wrong and when you weren’t. I made sure to never say you were right, because it went to your head. In retrospect, maybe I should’ve said it sometimes.

The mirror incident, though. That was something else entirely. I had tried to talk to you, tried to tell you I could help you, that you didn’t have to do it anymore. That was all. I just didn’t want you to have to do it anymore. You didn’t want to hear that, though. You scared me so bad, locking yourself in and screaming things that stopped being words long before I ever stopped hearing them in my sleep, night after night of you, stuck on replay in that bathroom, pressing the shards of my mirror into your flawless skin.

I was so afraid.

I remember in disjointed motion, breaking the door from its hinges and finding you there, crumpled like a rag doll and panting. Your lipstick was smeared. All I could focus on was your mouth. That red lipstick, that was always perfect. Your smeared lipstick, red like blood in your ghost-white face framed by night-black hair in my grimy bathroom floor and I just couldn’t do it, couldn’t look down to see the matching red on your skinny frame that would make me know but not understand.

I cleaned up the glass and I cleaned your wounds while you just watched me, all big eyes like you’d never seen blood before. Like someone else had been in there with you and done it. Like it wasn’t you at all.

I asked once if you were supposed to be on medication. I didn’t mean to, it just sort of slipped out. I really did want to know, though.

Surprisingly, you stayed calm. Continued flipping channels on my TV in your short dress with your legs spread a bit too much as you waited for the evening to wane a little more so you could go out and work, while I sat with a beer in my work clothes and stared at the peeling paint. Anything but you and what that dress revealed. Did you want me to see?

You told me that no, you weren’t. I didn’t believe you, and you didn’t try to convince me. Just sat there, calm as anything, while the chilly wind struck the windowpanes and the setting sun warmed your shoulders through the glass.

I thought maybe that night you wouldn’t go, but you did. You always did.

There were days when I didn’t work and you stayed home, sitting next to me and telling stories of places you’d seen and things you’d done in your fantastic youth. Fabulous tales of friends and adventures and everything our life wasn’t.

I would sit and sometimes play with the hem of your dress or the ends of your hair, when you were too deeply into your story-telling to notice, and listen. 

I’d listen to your long-winded explanations of exploits I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, and know that every word was a lie.

I knew about your abusive father and your cold mother, even though you never told me. You said it through empty gestures and the spaces words were supposed to go, but didn’t. In the same way, you told me of a lonely youth and being thrust, too early, into a world that couldn’t possibly understand you. I learned of your failed dreams, and your poor choices, and your fear of growing old. 

I knew every bit of this, and I never said a word. I never needed to. You knew, too.

Most days, though, we didn’t even talk. You were already gone when I came home from work and I had left again by the time you got back. When we were around at the same time, we communicated in a lot of nods and vague gestures and sometimes taking the trash out or bringing home more milk.

You never said a word about paying rent, and I never asked you to. You had lost your dignity too long ago to be worried about something so trivial as that. I didn’t care, though. Honestly, I think I loved you a little.

Maybe that’s why, when it started getting bad, I ignored the signs. I left you alone when you wanted to be and I pretended I didn’t notice when you got clingy. I pretended I didn’t notice a lot of things, like the way you stopped wearing just dresses, and sweated through pointless layers at home. The way you stopped telling stories, too. The odd looks you sometimes gave me, and the days at a time when you didn’t come home at all.

I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to know. Every minute I was with you, I spent looking away, instead of at your beautiful face. You were still beautiful, even through everything. You knew it, too. No matter what, you always had that.

Finally, when a week had come and gone with no trace of you anywhere, I knew what I had to do. On a cold Saturday morning, with the sun just cresting the tops of the buildings and the streets still quiet, I walked to a house I had hoped I would never see again, and rang the bell.

She answered with a vapid smile that turned into a frown the moment she saw me. She told me you weren’t there, that she hadn’t seen you in two days, and I knew she was telling the truth. I hated her. Wanted to slam that door in her face. Hit her. Rip her hair from her skull, just for looking too much like yours.

I knew, then, where you would be. I had known it. I had always known it. I just didn’t want to. God, I didn’t want to.

My feet carried me heavily to the alley I had first found you in, at the beginning of a long year that felt like a lifetime. Maybe two. 

There you sat, against the dirty wall with a burnt-out cigarette in one limp hand, and a bottle by your side. I knelt down, combing filthy hair away from your soft features, guiding it from your parted lips and closed eyes, so I could get a better look at you. I supported your head like that of a child.

Suddenly a sob burst from my lips, and I was cradling you to my chest, letting my tears soak your hair as I held close your small body, feeling the sharpness of your bones grating against one another through the thin dress you wore. Strands of your hair were in my mouth. They tasted of smoke, and of dirt, and of you.

After my initial response, I didn’t have to work hard to come to grips with myself. I let you go, wrapping my coat around your tiny frame. I didn’t even feel the cold. I laid you on your side, curling your legs tight to your body the way I knew you preferred to sleep, curled like a kitten to keep the world out.

I was just glad your eyes were closed.

I combed my fingers once more through your hair, pressing a kiss to your wasted cheek. Fumbling for the bottle, I swallowed what you hadn’t drunk and didn’t even care about the bitter taste. I looked at the top, wanting to see the familiar lipstick stains, but there were none. You had no lipstick on. No eyeliner, no mascara. Nothing, just smooth, dry skin stretched over bones as fragile as those of a bird. You were still beautiful, so beautiful.

As I walked away, I wished I hadn’t looked. I wanted to remember your lipstick, your soft red lips so unlike the ones in the bathroom that day, and the pale dry ones of today.

I looked up and felt a cool mist hit my face as it started to rain.

Sometimes, in life, things really don’t go as you wish.


End file.
